Archive for Kwiecień, 2012

CORE (aka Apple SA) does well in its supply of the new iPads, but supply remains a problem

The stock shortage of the new Apple iPad units know as the new iPad or the iPad 3continues, with suppliers struggling to provide the market with enough stock as demand is high. Prices vary and eager users who want to get their hands on the latest iPads are often willing to pay a premium.

Christopher Riley, MD of notebook and accessories retailer, The Notebook Company (Notebook.co.za / Laptop.co.za), said he is doing his best to supply the company’s clients. “We were the first company in SA to secure stock of the new units, albeit at a premium. We continue to try and meet the demand, even though we acknowledge that our clients are paying a premium. But they are aware of this.”

Riley said the local Apple distributor, Core, is doing a “stalwart job” to try and supply the market with what he said was “very aggressive pricing”.

Core is offering the new ipad / iPad3 Wi Fi enabled 4G (which works on 3G in SA) units at “keen prices”. The 16 GB 4G iPad comes in at R6 299, the 32 GG 4G at R7 299 and the 64 GB 4G at R8 299.

“These are very good prices,” said Riley. “Currently they are hard to match but we are listening to our clients – many of whom just want stock – even if they are paying a premium.”

He added that Core has done very well to make these prices available to the public. “However,” he added, “ I expect them to run into supply problems – but hope, for the public’s sake, that this does not happen too soon. The continuing problem is that end users often have to wait for stock for indefinite periods. We still have units available but we are warning the marketplace that our prices are 15% higher right now. We are not even able to buy at the USD Retail price of USD829. We are paying close on USD 1000 – and then still have to pay shipping on small quanties, clearing agents and VAT. But we are listening to what our clients want – so we will continue to try and provide stock as fast as possible.”

Gammatek, leading distributor of Branded Technology Accessories in Southern Africa has introduced Golla, the popular mobile lifestyle company’s 2012 range of fun and fashion-forward accessories that include laptop bags, smartphone hard covers and tablet sleeves.

Showcased at the recent, renowned Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Golla has undoubtedly taken its approach to design to the next, eye-catching level which makes any mobile device look like a true fashion accessory while offering the necessary protection against falls, bumps and scratches.

The Laptop and Tablet Sleeves offer protection coupled with eye-catching motifs that suite a range of tastes and needs. The Golla Laptop Bags are resilient and are available with numerous carrying options, enabling you to customise it to suite your needs.

The new Golla G-Bag is light-weight, versatile and offers a cushioned gadget compartment which makes it ideal for people and their tablets on-the-go. The iPhone 4/4s Hardcover casing also offers important protection and is made from durable polycarbonate, which makes scratch and shatter resistant.

The range also features fun, colourful Superbee earphones (in red, black, white and charchaol) and swanky camera bags and Digi Bags that make carrying your camera equipment a breeze while featuring padding to safeguard it against bumps and falls.

The Golla Mobile Wallet combines a simple compartment for your smartphone with several slots for cards and a zip pocket for other essentials. Your smartphone is therefore easily accessible and your screen remains scratch-free. Carry it from the belt loop or in your bag.

Lastly, the Golla Mobile Bag comes with an extra pocket perfect for small items like earphones, small change or a bank/credit card. It features: a carabiner for attaching the bag in a variety of places such as a belt loop, bigger shoulder bag or backpack; a separate neck-strap; zipped pocket on the back for earphones, coins etc; and soft lining material to protect the screen of the device

“The range from Golla epitomise the saying form meets function, these products are all great to look at but offer the necessary protection which is so crucial in a mobile world,” comments Zev Cherniak at Gammatek.

Retail Values
The new Golla 2012 range is available at all major retail, photo and luggage stores nationwide and retails for approximately:

An experiment conducted by Mindlab International at The Sussex Innovation Centre on behalf of collaborative work management software provider, Mindjet, found that both individuals and groups of office workers are wasting valuable mental resources, performing less efficiently and retaining less information by using traditional office software when compared to visual mapping techniques.

The experiment used neurometrics, the science of measuring patterns of brain activity through EEG, and skin conductance, to compare the efficacy of visual mapping software with traditional office software. The results concluded that storing, sharing and managing information through visual maps (rather than in separate spreadsheets, text documents, e-mails and server files) leads to more accurate and faster information processing and uses fewer mental resources.

According to Dr Lynda Shaw, PhD CPhsychol, “The results underscore that the human brain loves visual images and processes information presented in this way much more easily. This is because, unlike traditional ways of working, the brain does not operate like a filing system; instead it stores information in sensory cortical areas and reconstructs meaning based on previously obtained knowledge, tied together by a complex web of connections. Visual mapping emulates this process with visual items that engage more areas of the brain, allowing us to see, explore and understand large amounts of data at once and convey abstract information in intuitive ways.”

Individual participants using visual mapping techniques used 20 percent less mental resources, performed 17 percent more efficiently and were able to recall 4.5 percent more data when completing every day office tasks than individuals using traditional software.

Similarly, groups collaborating on a project used on average 10 percent less mental resources, were eight percent more productive and recalled 6.5 percent more data compared to groups using traditional software.
With work-related stress being a major health concern in the developed world, these findings indicate that visual techniques could ease pressure for workers, improving employee and team satisfaction and in turn performance at work.

Chris Harman, regional vice president for Northern Europe, Middle East and Africa at Mindjet, comments: “Digital technology provides us with more ways to access and receive information than ever before. It’s revolutionised the way we can access data and knowledge, however it also means we’re bombarded with information from more sources than we know what to do with and it seems our current working practices just can’t keep up. Research conducted by Mindjet and One Poll last year showed that British office workers struggle to manage this information, with two in three of us feeling that we’re drowning in data at work, one in three e-mails going unread and the average person wasting two weeks a year searching for misplaced information.

“As most office software was developed in the 1990s, before the advent of big data and social media, this is hardly surprising. We’ve entered an exciting new phase in the digital revolution, but most of the office tools are stuck in the last century and need to adapt to deal with this surge and acceleration in data. New technologies, such as collaborative visualisation software, are being designed to solve these problems and the results of this experiment prove their value to businesses today.”

Dr Shaw also explains, “While a hundred years ago, linear note taking served us well when office life mainly consisted of reading, writing and simple maths, these days it’s clear that people are struggling to cope with all the information and technology that modern working life involves. Information overload is a new by-product of the evolution of intelligence and information, and is a very real issue. However, as we created this scenario, we have the power to work with it. By embracing new ways of working, which are better adapted to the way our minds work naturally, we can help employees work more efficiently, reduce stress and as a result cut absenteeism.”

Says Gary Allemann, MD at Master Data Management: “The exponential growth of data and the proliferation of data sources require companies to adopt a high performance data processing infrastructure for their demanding business needs. expressor Enterprise Edition addresses these big data needs via its patented data processing engine, which has been enhanced to achieve near linear scalability for parallel loads. With this new edition, expressor further cements its price/performance leadership position in the data integration market.”

The new version of expressor delivers ease of use and rapid development capabilities, making this solution ideal for data centric users that require a simplified approach to the tedious and time consuming tasks that are typical of many other data integration solutions.
The solution can be deployed on either Windows or Linux servers (with minimum specifications) for a single user cost. Similarly, the solution can support any number of expressor Studio development seats.

Other enhancements released in version 3.6 include significant improvements to the user interface and the Teradata Parallel Transport Operator which provides really fast data loading for expressor software’s Teradata clients using Teradata’s Parallel Transport API.

“For the first time, budget conscious companies and departments with Big Data needs are able to purchase a single enterprise platform at an extremely affordable price,” said Bob Potter, CEO of expressor software. “Customers can deploy the expressor Enterprise Edition on a Windows or Linux server of any size in terms of RAM and number of processors at no extra cost. In addition, expressor Enterprise Edition can be used with any number of expressor Studio ETL development seats, making it without doubt the industry leader in price / performance.”

Norton by Symantec (Nasdaq: SYMC) announced the availability of Norton Tablet Security, including a new “Scream” feature that helps users find a lost or stolen phone quickly. This offering for the Android platform further support the Norton Everywhere initiative, which extends Norton’s security expertise and technologies to protect consumers everywhere they go, regardless of device or platform.

“With today’s tablets, people stand to risk losing much more than contact information when a device is lost or stolen – it’s access to their email, social networking sites, financial institutions or even exposing personal photos or videos, as many celebrities have,” said Kara Rawden, Senior Marketing Manager Middle East & Africa, Consumer Business Unit, Symantec. “Given these risks, consumers are increasingly motivated to protect their mobile lives. Norton Tablet Security provides protection from physical and online threats from one of the most trusted brand in security.”

This new offering is designed specifically for Android tablets to protect the device, as well as the user’s privacy and important data, against loss, theft, viruses, and other threats through the following features:
• Web-based Anti-Theft – By logging in through a web browser, users can access anti-theft features that include the ability to remotely lock a lost or stolen device, preventing information from being stolen. Users can also add a default or custom “device lost” message to the lock screen. A lost or stolen tablet can also be located on a map, which shows the device’s most recent locations. For those who want to see who may have their device, the “Sneak Peek” feature remotely takes a photo using the front-facing tablet camera and uploads the picture to the anti-theft site that stores and displays the most recent pictures.

• Anti-Malware – Automatically scans all the apps and app updates downloaded to the mobile device and SD card for threats.
• Web Protection – Norton Safe Web technology alerts on fraudulent and malicious websites, protecting the device from content accessed or downloaded over mobile networks and Wi-Fi connections, without slowdowns or interruptions.

Pricing, Availability and Compatibility
Norton Tablet Security is available from the Norton Online Store for R299.00, which provides one year of protection.

LOOPHOLD Security Distribution, a distributor of Barracuda Networks, has announced the new Barracuda Backup Service with VMware host support, allowing customers to quickly and efficiently backup and restore guest virtual machines. The new service also provides de-duplicated images of virtual servers that can be transferred offsite for comprehensive disaster recovery protection. This new functionality is available free of charge for existing Barracuda Backup Service customers with an active Energize Updates subscription.

The new Barracuda Backup Service offers physical and virtual backups within a single, integrated offsite replication solution with no complex per server or per application fees. With VMware host support, Barracuda Backup Service customers have a quicker, more efficient way to recover their virtual servers, including comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity functionality regardless of whether they replicate their data to the cloud or to another Barracuda Backup Server.

Says Martin Tassev, MD at LOOPHOLD Security Distribution, “Organisations are increasingly moving towards a virtualised environment, driven by the efficiency and cost benefit of the aggregation of storage space. Having a single integrated solution, will allow our resellers to offer their clients a solution that maximizes their resources and ensures their data is safe.”

In March Kaspersky Lab experts, together with their colleagues from other organisations specialising in IT security, succeeded in closing down the latest version of the notorious Hlux/Kelihos botnet. As a result, the proportion of spam in email traffic dropped by 3.5 percentage points compared to the previous month and averaged 75%. In absolute terms, this translated into a 20% fall in the amount of spam compared to February.

However, the decrease in the amount of unsolicited email did not affect the level of danger inherent in spam: the same proportion of malicious files (2.8%) was found in email traffic as in the previous month. For the third month in a row the US topped the rating of email antivirus detections: the share of Kaspersky Mail Anti-Virus detections increased by 1.7 percentage points in the US compared to February and accounted for 14.7% of the overall total. Australia came an unexpected second with 12.4%, having doubled its result for February (an increase of 6.9 percentage points). As was the case in February, Hong Kong occupied third place.

In order to spread malicious code via email, spammers need to keep inventing newer and more resourceful social engineering scams. A mass mailing detected on 20-23 March offered a prime example of this. The messages in the mailing mimicked a confirmation message from an airline’s online ticket reservation system that referred to a flight scheduled for 20 March. A link in the message led to the installation of a Trojan program that then downloaded the infamous ZeuS/Zbot, a malicious program is designed to steal personal data from users of online payment services.

The most popular themes exploited in spam throughout March included St. Patrick’s Day, Easter and the launch of the iPad 3. It should be noted that the topic of holidays was actively exploited for commodity advertising, whereas the new Apple iPad was used as bait. Promising a free iPad or iPhone is an old, well-known trick which is obviously still effective because the fraudsters continue to utilise it to drag users into pyramid schemes or trick them into clicking on phishing or malicious links. A month ago the recipients of these mailings were mainly being offered an iPad 2 or an iPhone 4S – now it is the turn of iPad 3.

“March did not bring significant changes to the top rated sources of spam. The first three places were occupied by India, Indonesia and Brazil,” says Maria Namestnikova, Senior Spam Analyst at Kaspersky Lab. “Although the proportion of spam may have decreased slightly, it is still dangerous and the distributors of unsolicited messages are resorting to increasingly sophisticated scams.”

“Life is not under our control, and risk is ever-present. Fortunately, many risks can be reduced by acting with basic common sense; and many can be insured against,” says Kevin Phillips, MD of idu Software.

For example, the biggest physical risk most of us face every day is getting into our cars. But if you obey traffic rules and drive defensively, you can dramatically reduce your risk of being injured or killed in a motor vehicle accident. For the freak outside chance – of which there are many, many fewer than most people think – there is vehicle insurance, health insurance and life insurance to shield you and your family from the worst financial consequences.

In business, the major risks are financial: Bad debts, fraud, natural disasters, new competitors, changing tastes that reduce demand for your product. Most of these risks can be reduced by following sound business practices – think of it as defensive driving for your business.

Managing to reduce risk doesn’t mean employing more people to monitor and check what is going on. Rather, it means having processes and tools in place that will alert you quickly when a red flag is raised. The more quickly you identify a non-paying client or a pattern of suspicious invoices, the more quickly you can shut the problem down and the less exposure you will face.

So proper risk management, as so much else in management, comes down to delivering the right information, to the right people, at the right time.

Fortunately, this isn’t rocket science: Most of the time, it’s a simple matter of plugging in the right system. But it wasn’t always this way, and after many years of struggling to extract financial information and make it available, most of us are conditioned to tragically low expectations.

For example, an astonishing number of organisations appear resigned to the fact that they can only really examine May 1st’s expense figures sometime in the middle of June, when the books for May are closed and the monthly report comes before the board meeting. That means a clever fraudster, to take a worst-cases scenario, has seven or eight weeks to cover their tracks before someone will even be able to see the information that might raise suspicion.

There are still plenty of companies, typically with older legacy systems, where the accounts payable system talks to the general ledger only once a month. That’s the first time it’s possible for anyone to compare what was spent with what was budgeted – and a lot of damage can happen in the meantime.

If that describes you, it’s time to raise your expectations. It’s quite possible, given any number of tools currently on the market, to review today’s figures tomorrow. Knowing what’s happening in your business now, not eight weeks ago, is becoming an absolute necessity for survival.

Traditional accounting controls on their own, while essential and important, are not enough. A clever fraud will account for everything entirely according to the rules – it’s only by keeping a regular eye on the big picture that you can see patterns that ought not to be there. Applying an old adage “many hands make light work”, or in this case the more pairs of eyes looking at the numbers the more difficult it is to hide anomalies from everyone. In so many ways transparency is one of the strongest internal controls that an organisation can have and also the easiest to implement.

Fraud will happen, in short, no matter what. But you can reduce your risk of major losses by making sure your financial information is timely, accurate and widely distributed. It’s the best defence.

Letshego Holdings Limited (Letshego), a financial services company that currently operates in seven African countries, has deployed Post Vision Technology’s online PPM software, Project Portfolio Office (PPO), and the solution is set to play a major role in its future expansion strategy.

According to Shawn Bruwer, CIO at Letshego, the group is continuously looking for new opportunities to increase its footprint. “In line with this business growth, we require a robust and reliable project management tool,” he says.

Bruwer explains that Letshego will utilise PPO to ensure that its geographically distributed project team can collaborate effectively on its long-term business transformation programme.

“Within our business environment, it became a necessity to reduce the administrative overhead for what is, essentially, a small project management office. To do this, the group required a tool to manage its projects and programmes in a visible, transparent and effective manner,” he says.

“Letshego chose PPO due to the breadth of its functionality and the numerous useful reports and dashboards that come as standard. The relatively painless process to request and implement specifically required changes to our instance was also an attraction; as was the ability to easily scale the number of users according to demand and to cancel subscription with reasonable notice made.

“The decision to purchase was straightforward as we feel that the PPO solution is the most cost effective and comprehensive programme management tool available on the market. The fact that it is also offered as a solution in the ‘cloud’ was another major draw card. In addition, PPO’s track record of satisfied clients and the excellent support and training provided played an important role in the decision to acquire the solution.”

According to Guy Jelley, CEO at Post Vision Technology, the group opted for PPO’s pre-configured off-the-shelf solution, which was installed, customised and trained on within three days.

“Supporting Letshego’s users using cloud functionality has been clear-cut and simple,” he says. “We are also pleased that working with Letshego supports our strategy to increase PPO’s presence on the African continent.”

The initial users at Letshego are its project management committee, which comprises senior stakeholders from across the business. “Over time, this will expand to include operational employees, who will undertake significant project-related activity,” says Bruwer.